Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy (16 page)

Trust.

Trust was the kicker. Could he entrust his heart to the Duvalier princess as he’d entrusted it once before?

With every sun-filled day and passion-filled night with Simone, the answer became even more blindingly obvious.

Yes.

Rafe found the House of Duvalier heiress in the kitchen overseeing last-minute food and beverage preparations for the ball. She looked up and saw him and her eyes warmed in welcome. She looked every inch the princess tonight; a vibrant, accomplished woman with a radiance about her that put all other women to shame. Pregnancy suited her as Chateau des Caverness suited her and Rafael knew that he’d made no mistake in bringing her home.

She’d have stayed with him in Maracey. She would stay with him in Maracey again and set every one of Etienne’s statesman aflutter with her scheming on his behalf, but for now Caverness was where she needed to be and this was where they would stay.

Rafe sent his heiress a crooked smile as plates and glassware clattered around them. Someone dropped a fork. Someone else sighed. Simone smiled wryly and crossed to his side.

‘You have no idea of the havoc you wreak when you smile like that, do you?’ she said when she reached him.

He smiled again, just so he could watch her eyes darken. ‘Oh, I have
some
idea,’ he murmured, and set
his lips to her cheek in greeting. ‘Evening, princess.’ Anything more would have to wait until they were alone.

He hated waiting.

‘Walk with me in the garden,’ he said as she preceded him from the bustling kitchen, and, wrapping her arm around his waist and tucking in close to his heart, she did.

He hated hard, did Rafael. It was a flaw in his nature and he knew it full well. But he loved hard too and he’d never stopped loving this woman, not once in ten long years. It was time he made that clear to her.

‘Gabrielle and I planned a surprise for you,’ she said as they strolled along the wide stone walkway towards the steps that would lead them to the formal front gardens that had been lit for the evening by hundreds of glowing garden candles. Caverness could shine when it wanted to, he remembered that about it now, and tonight someone had gone all out to see that it did. ‘We were all set to reveal it to you this afternoon only you weren’t around.’

‘Luc and I did have one or two unexpected delays throughout the day.’ Or ten. ‘May I have my surprise now?’

‘No, you’re going to have to wait for the ball now, though I can tell you what it is.’

Rafe smiled as he took her hand and guided her down the steps. She
wanted
to tell him. She was busting to tell him. ‘Tell me.’

‘Harrison’s here. He’ll be here for two weeks. Gabrielle can’t stop hugging him she’s so excited. She’s already planning to take him on a tour of Hammerschmidt tomorrow. I said we’d join them.’

‘Good.’ Rafe had been helping Luc rip out old grapevines and prepare new ground for new rootstock. He and Luc worked well together and always had and Rafe was
more than willing to offer his labour in the hope of getting the property ready for Duvalier occupation before small babies arrived.

‘We should take something along to plant in the garden there,’ murmured Simone. ‘A cutting from Caverness. A reminder.’ She slanted him a glance from solemn eyes. ‘Does it bother you being back here?’

‘Not as much as I thought it would,’ he murmured. ‘It’s different now.
I’m
different.’ They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘I caught a frog for you this morning. But I lost it in the window box.’

‘Tell Ruby,’ said Simone with a grin. ‘She’ll find it for you.’

‘They were never really frogs, you know,’ he said, wishing like hell he’d found that blasted book of poems. ‘They just looked like frogs, hopped like frogs and lived like frogs.’

‘So what were they?’ she murmured. ‘Princes?’

‘They were pieces of my heart,’ he said gruffly, and shoved his at her feet. He dug into his pocket for the emerald frog and held it out towards her. ‘It’s the last piece,’ he said. ‘I gave the rest of it to you bit by bit.’

He watched in silence as the moisture in Simone’s eyes threatened to overflow, but she took the little frog from him and held it up to the light of the harvest moon. Not that she could see it for the waterworks, but for once he didn’t mind a woman’s tears. ‘I love it,’ she said. ‘I love
you
, Rafael Alexander, whoever you are, and I always have. I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since you turned up in my garden and demanded I come with you to Maracey. I’ve been waiting for you to notice.’

Rafael smiled and let her words of love fill him. ‘I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes.’

‘I forgive you,’ she said magnanimously. ‘You had a lot on your mind. A future to consider. A past to reconcile.’ She offered him a solemn smile. ‘All that has shaped you, and all that you are. It’s not easy, sometimes, to get you to drop your guard.’

Rafe knew her statement for truth. ‘It’s down now. For you.’

‘I know.’ Simone separated the strands of the filigree chain and put the frog to her neck. ‘It’s a situation I intend to take full advantage of for the rest of my life.’

He loved a canny princess.

‘Walk with me,’ she said, and pointed towards the garages and gardening sheds that flanked one side of the chateau. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

‘And I, you,’ he said. He gestured towards the lindentree drive. ‘Only it’s that way.’

A rapping noise sounded from high above, a determined fist upon a window pane. The window opened, and Gabrielle Duvalier, mistress of Caverness, leaned out. Lucien Duvalier, the master of Caverness, leaned out too.

‘Nice frog,’ Luc told his sister. ‘It’s very you.’ He shot Rafe an amused glance. ‘The prince suits you too, although I abhor his taste in cars.’

‘Are you going for a walk?’ asked Gabrielle, and without waiting for their reply pointed towards the caves of Caverness, where vignerons had been storing their wines for centuries. ‘I strongly recommend that you wander on into the south storage cave.’ She disappeared, only to return to the window moments later with something in her hand. ‘You’ll need keys to get in.’ She tossed them down to Rafael. ‘You should go straight there. Detours at this particular point in time are only going to scare you.’ Gabrielle blew them a cheeky kiss.
‘Bon
soir,’
she said, and then the window pane slid down and she and Luc disappeared.

Rafe jingled the keys in his hand. Simone smiled up at him. ‘Do you know why she wants us to head for the caves?’ asked Simone.

‘Not exactly.’ But he could guess. Gabrielle had been aware of the potential need for privacy when gifting Simone with a Bugatti. Gabrielle had arranged for the Bugatti to be shifted to a location that would ensure such privacy. Gabrielle was extremely good at forward thinking and paving his way with puppies and now privacy. Rafe really needed to do something wonderful for her in return. Maybe he could get her a horse.

‘Shall we?’ he said.

Simone slanted her angel a sideways glance. She put her hand on his arm to steady herself and removed first one ruby-red stiletto and then the other and looped the straps over Rafael’s fingers.

‘Do you remember the
way
to the south storage cave?’ she asked archly. ‘I know what your memory’s like.’

‘Happens I do,’ he murmured with one of those rare smiles that could light up a day, or a sweet harvest night.

Simone flashed him a smile as she bent down and bunched up the skirt of her gown until it was thigh-high. Rafe’s eye’s widened. His grin grew wolfish. ‘Race you,’ she said, and took to her heels.

Rafe caught her well before they reached the caves, and caught her hand and kept right on running until locked cave doors blocked their progress. Gasping for breath and laughing with joy, Simone leaned against the wall while Rafe opened the door to the tunnel that led to the south storage caves. ‘You might want to lock it behind you,’ she suggested.

‘I do want to lock it behind me,’ he said as they slipped inside. He shut the door behind them and hauled her up against him as he ensured their privacy. ‘The baby,’ he muttered as his body responded to her proximity with satisfying speed.

‘Is going to be a runner,’ she said as Rafe’s bow tie headed south, and then his jacket, and then the buttons of his shirt came undone beneath her questing fingers. ‘Possibly a stripper.’

‘Definitely a handful,’ he said as he captured her mouth and catapulted her into the stars.

‘Do we really need to go all the way to the south cave?’ Simone was quite happy to take matters in hand right here, right now, although a surface other than the floor would definitely be an asset.

‘Maybe they put a bed in there,’ he murmured. ‘Looks like they left us some champagne.’ He glanced towards the tiny side bench by the door and Simone followed his gaze. Two champagne flutes sat on the bench and beside them stood a silver ice bucket with two bottles in it, up to their necks in ice. She wriggled free of Rafe and went to investigate. One was a bottle of 1956 Chateau Caverness. The other was a bottle of Perrier.

‘That’s just sad,’ she said.

Rafe picked up the ice bucket and the glasses, heaven knew where he’d left her shoes, and headed down the tunnel. ‘They’re very thorough,’ he said. ‘My hopes of a bed are improving.’

They headed for the storage cavern Gabrielle had suggested. It was one of their bigger caverns and usually functioned as a collection point for orders. There were dozens of secluded and romantic nooks and nestlings in the labyrinth that made up the caves of Caverness. The
south storage cave was not one of them. Even the tunnel they walked along was one of the main thoroughfares, capable of admitting forklifts and electronically powered carts that towed trailers full of champagne to the outside world.

They reached the cavern and stopped. Simone snickered. Rafael blinked.

Two butt-ugly blue Bugattis sat side by side in the middle of the empty cave, their bumpers almost touching, and their chrome bits gleaming in the soft light of dozens upon dozens of tiny candles.

‘I love my family,’ murmured Simone. ‘Which one’s yours?’

‘The one on the right,’ he murmured. ‘Please don’t tell me you bought the one on the left.’ He sounded as if he were in pain.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I borrowed it from the Comte d’Aredeney. It’s going back tomorrow. When’s yours going back?’

Silence.

Simone turned her head to stare at him. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Think of it as an investment,’ he said a touch desperately.

Simone began to smile. Then she began to laugh. ‘In what?’

‘In our future, not to mention a reminder of some very good times in our past.’

Simone approached Rafael’s car and opened the rear door wide. ‘After you,’ she said.

But Rafael hadn’t finished yet. ‘I have this puppy,’ he said. ‘And, and…ducks!’ She stood there, his wanton princess, with her hair falling around her face and her eyes bright with love and he forgot all about the list of
things he felt he could offer her and went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘And a need for you that burns so deep inside me it hurts.’ He took a breath and to hell with love poems. ‘Marry me,’ he said. ‘There’s this guest house that’s perfect for weddings. Friendly reception. Good restaurant service. Fine winery nearby. There’s this garden between the restaurant and the guest house and halfway between the two there’s this nook that’s perfect for—’

‘Rafael,’ she said imperiously. ‘I’ll marry you. Please, just get in the car.’

But he hadn’t finished yet. ‘When?’

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Even sooner if you’d just get in the car. I’ll marry you now if you want me to, in front of a pair of Bugattis and with God as my witness. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. And you might as well make yourself comfortable,’ she said as she removed her remaining hairpins and let her hair tumble free. ‘Because I do intend to count the ways.’

^*
First in the
Hot Bed of Scandal
duet

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2009
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Kelly Hunter 2009

ISBN 978-1-4089-1344-4